Grail - Elizabeth Bear [140]
“No,” Mallory said. “But I could.”
That was a long pause for an energy being. “Excuse me?”
“She’s in the library. You have Mirth’s pattern. That’s enough for a seed that could grow in her old body—or the pattern that was her old body. The pathways are there. I can bring her back.”
“Oh,” Tristen said. After a time, he said, “It wouldn’t be her, exactly.”
Mallory said, “Ask Perceval. It would be as much Sparrow, I suspect, as you are Tristen Tiger. Continuity of experience is an illusion, old man.”
Mallory felt it when Tristen glanced at Benedick, though there was no visual input to indicate it. The attention shifted, and it was obvious to anyone else so transformed.
A glitter of life-motes flocked past, sparking green and turquoise, chasing each other tumbling through the void. Cynric’s parrotlets, transformed. Transformed into something otherwise, as was all the world.
A broad world now, and scattered. Mallory felt confident in its diversity.
Tristen said, “Cynric is not exactly Cynric anymore. And you’re probably right. I am not me. I remember what I left behind when I changed, but I can—I cannot feel it. No. To summon Sparrow back from the dead would mean sacrificing Dorcas.”
“The terrorist?”
“The freedom fighter. Should I condemn her to death to give birth to a shadow? Let her live, Mallory. Sparrow is dead. It is time I let her die.”
Mallory leaned forward, to let their margins overlap. Whatever they had become, there was a sense of comfort in the touch.
“Some tiger you turned out to be.”
“I’m a tiger who does not care to hunt any longer.” He turned his back to the world below, his attention to the cold bright stars beyond. Mallory floated beside him, imagining all the forms of farewell.
“Come away with me,” Tristen said.
Mallory wished for a painful moment of sense-memory that there were a calming breath to be taken. A thousand ghost voices rang in the necromancer’s heart, each one bereft and abandoned, a pattern of loneliness and memories. Everyone loved and lost, and perhaps it took a necromancer to appreciate how truly universal that experience could be.
“Will you pretend you love me?”
“I don’t really need to pretend.”
Tristen hesitated, then seemed to firm his resolve and spoke on. “It is not the thing I had with Aefre. But it is what I have to offer, and if you want it, it is yours.”
Mallory would have smiled, if smiling were an option. “How can I refuse an offer like that? We are all we have. And we are so small, and the night is so large.”
—and ye,
What are ye? Galahads?—no, nor Percivales.
—ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON, “The Holy Grail”
acknowledgments
Liz Bourke, who named Fortune for me, as well as the ideological heresies of the modern world. Chance Morrison and Celia Marsh, who convinced me that “Bad Landing” was a better name than “Crash.” Anne Groell Keck, the editor who helped it all make sense. Bad Poets galore, who listened to me thrash and moan through the draft. Andrew Phillips, copy editor extraordinaire. Jennifer Jackson, world’s best agent. Emma and Sarah and Delia, who held my hand through the worst of the birth pangs. And numerous more—too many to be mentioned.
Table of Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Contents
1. when the world ended
2. a child was not to blame
3. divergent evolution
4. a library once
5. harder things, and worse
6. cometh a monster
7. if you can hear me
8. where they ought stand
9. tristen, tiger
10. this fragment
11. adapt
12. carried bright scars
13. this lord of grail
14. it is a library, and I am its necromancer
15. learn to praise the imperfect world
16. a girl who had no wings
17. who ruined all of us
18. a sort of embrace
19. the lathe of evolution
20. all the world and everything
21. for the descent
22. wounds
23. another tiny bird came to her hands
24. the world and the world
25. silence is an answer
26. for my sister
27. the feeble starlight itself
acknowledgments